AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C01)

Define cloud through NIST's five characteristics—on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service—and explore scalable migration strategies from lift-and-shift to cloud-native architectures.

Explore cloud deployment models including public, private, hybrid, community, and multi-cloud, focusing on security, scalability, and connectivity, with hybrid cloud as the temporary transitional phase.

Compare public, private, and hybrid cloud platforms from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Alibaba. Learn how private clouds, VMware, and economy of scale optimize security, compliance, and cost.

Explore cloud economics by contrasting on-prem and cloud costs, covering hidden expenses, data migration, licensing, capex and opex, and budgeting with the AWS pricing calculator.

Discover cloud cost benefits from rightsizing infrastructure, automation, and managed services that scale resources to demand. Learn scaling up and out, containers, and shared security and compliance with AWS.

Explore cloud design principles that design for failure through redundancy and disposable resources, embracing microservices and APIs to enable modular, scalable, and parallel cloud architectures.

Explore cloud native design, contrasting lift-and-shift with elastic, scalable infrastructure, automation, and modular architecture in AWS, including serverless concepts like lambda, and identify cloud service models SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

Explore cloud service models—from software as a service to platform as a service and infrastructure as a service—using a pizza analogy to illustrate shifting responsibility and required skills.

Discover how AWS groups 200-plus services into core categories—compute, storage, networking, and databases. Explore key services like EC2, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, VPC, and Redshift and how the console organizes them.

Explore connectivity options to the cloud, including public internet, VPNs, and Direct Connect, with explanations of client VPN, site-to-site VPN, and colocation facilities.

Access the cloud by selecting GUI, CLI, API, or SDK options, using the console or cloud shell, and configuring IAM access and API gateways.

Explore how AWS infrastructure is organized into regions, availability zones, and data centers, plus edge locations, and learn how CloudFront and Global Accelerator reduce latency by serving content near users.

Explore how to ensure cloud availability through redundancy and multi-region strategies, including availability zones, disaster recovery options, to avoid a single point of failure, and RPO/RTO considerations.

Compare AWS compute services: EC2 virtual servers, ECS containers, and Lambda functions. Learn how load balancers enable scalable, distributed traffic across clusters in the cloud.

Launch an EC2 instance in the AWS console, choose an AMI and instance type, and create a key pair for secure access.

Explore how ECS in AWS deploys container images stored in ECR repositories. Run tasks and services on EC2-backed clusters behind the scenes.

Explore lambda serverless compute, using the Hello World blueprint in the console to run code with triggers, test outputs, and understand millisecond-based pricing and memory impact.

Explore storage services like S3, EBS, and EFS, and compare storage types. Review hybrid options and offline pay-as-you-go solutions like storage gateways, snowball, and snowmobile.

Explore how to create an S3 bucket, upload an object, and control access with public access settings and a bucket policy, illustrating object storage in AWS.

Explore how elastic block storage (EBS) attaches to EC2 instances, creates root and data volumes, and manages attachment, detachment, and cleanup while considering cost and encryption.

Explore three core AWS networking services: VPC, security groups, and Route 53, defining network space, protecting instances, and mapping website addresses to IP addresses for global reach.

Explore virtual private cloud, public and private subnets, and how internet gateways and route tables define internet access within a VPC.

Explore how security groups guard EC2 instances with stateful inbound rules, and how network ACLs protect subnets, in a practical AWS security walkthrough.

Explore AWS database services, comparing relational and non-relational models and how RDS, DynamoDB, and Redshift fit different use cases, from transactional queries to data warehousing.

Learn how to create and protect a relational database with AWS RDS. Choose engines like MySQL and explore multi-az deployments, security groups, backups, and read replicas.

Explore AWS support services from free to premium, learn how to choose with the well-architected framework and best practices, and access resources like knowledge center, architecture center, and partner network.

Explore how AWS Trusted Advisor tracks best practices and flags security, IAM, and configuration gaps across well-architected pillars. Learn how its checks help optimize security, costs, and service limits.

Explore infrastructure as code with cloud formation to define, deploy, and reproduce complex environments as stacks and templates, using yaml or json, and track changes for forensics and documentation.

Understand the shared responsibility model and how AWS and customers divide security across data, endpoints, and cloud infrastructure. See this split illustrated with EC2, RDS, and S3.

Explore AWS security documentation, best practices, and resources, including white papers, blogs, and videos, that cover security in the cloud, the shared responsibility model, and tools like inspector.

Discover security resources and best practices for AWS, including the AWS Knowledge Center, AWS Security Center, the security blog, the security forum, the partner network, and compliance guides.

Explore multi-layer cloud network security in AWS using security groups, NACLs, network firewalls, and web application firewalls to protect subnets, instances, and web apps.

Protect data in states—at rest, in motion, and in use—using encryption and AWS tools. Learn to apply encryption with AWS services and KMS for data in S3, EBS, and RDS.

Explore how cloud compliance differs from security, meeting government and industry standards with least privilege, auditing tools, and AWS shared responsibility using Artifact and Audit Manager.

Explore how to monitor cloud resources using CloudWatch, set alarms with thresholds, and route notifications through SNS topics and subscriptions to EC2, S3, and other services.

Discover how logging differs from monitoring, and how CloudTrail records API activity and stores logs in S3 for retroactive auditing and security insights.

Learn how configuration management protects resources from unauthorized changes using AWS Config, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and SNS notifications, and enforce encryption by default and stringent access controls.

Learn AWS account types, from root and user accounts to service accounts, and how groups and organizations enforce least privilege.

Explore how AWS IAM uses policies to define permissions for identities like users, groups, and roles, and how temporary roles differ from long-term policies with practical EC2 examples.

Learn cloud access management best practices in AWS, including secure programmatic access, credential handling, password design and policies, and multi-factor authentication with virtual MFA, security keys, and IAM.

Explore how to track costs across an entire organization with AWS organizations, consolidated billing, cost reports, tagging, and volume discounts to allocate expenses by department or project.

Explore EC2 pricing models to save costs, including on-demand, reserved (standard and convertible), and spot instances with per-second pricing and marketplace options.

Explore how S3 pricing works across storage classes and lifecycle rules to auto-transition data from standard to infrequent access and Glacier, optimizing costs and retrieval considerations.

AWS pricing options across EC2, Lightsail, and Lex, and learn to use the AWS Pricing Calculator and Pricing API to build detailed, region-aware cost estimates for budgeting.

Explore Cost Explorer, cost and usage reports (cur), and QuickSite to analyze costs, detect anomalies, and optimize, with guidance from billing support and enterprise concierge.

Monitor AWS costs with CloudWatch alarms and billing thresholds, receiving SNS email notifications to prevent unexpected charges. Enable billing preferences and respect the free tier limits.

Study for the AWS certified cloud practitioner exam using the AWS free tier with hands-on console practice, and learn 12-month and always-free options and their limits.

Master last-minute cloud practitioner prep with AWS free trials, exam objectives, and practice questions. Focus on verbs like define and explain to understand concepts and teach others for deeper learning.